Climate change is now the biggest challenge faced by humanity worldwide and ethics is the crucial missing component in the debate about what to do about this enormous threat. This book examines why ...thirty-five years of discussion of human-induced warming has failed to acknowledge fundamental ethical concerns, and subjects climate change's most important policy questions to ethical analysis.
This book examines why ethical principles have failed to gain traction in policy formation and recommends specific strategies to ensure that climate change policies are consistent with ethical principles. Because climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution and given that many nations refuse participation due to perceived inequities in proposed international solutions, this book explains why ensuring that nations, sub-national governments, organizations, businesses and individuals acknowledge and respond to their ethical obligations is both an ethical and practical mandate. This book is the first of its kind to go beyond a mere account of relevant ethical questions to offer a pragmatic guide on how to make ethical principles influential in formulating the world's response to climate change.
Written by Donald A. Brown, a leading voice in the field, it should be of interest to policy makers, and those studying environmental policy, climate change policy, international relations, environmental ethics and philosophy.
Debating climate change Malone, Elizabeth L
2009, 20091201, 2009-12-01, 20090101
eBook, Book
As greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated and contentious voices fill the air, the question gains urgency: How can people with widely varying viewpoints agree to address climate change? Each ...participant in the debate seems to have a different agenda, from protecting economic growth in developing countries to protecting the energy industry in industrialized countries, from those aghast at the damage done to the Earth to optimists who think we just need to adjust our technological approach.
Debating Climate Change sorts through the tangle of arguments surrounding climate change to find paths to unexpected sites of agreement. Using an innovative sociological approach - combined discourse and social network analyses - Elizabeth L. Malone analyzes 100 documents representing a range of players in this high-stakes debate. Through this she shows how even the most implacable adversaries can find common ground - and how this common ground can be used to build agreement.
Written in a clear, accessible style, this original research and insightful use of communication analysis will help advance understanding and negotiation on climate change throughout the pivotal times to come.
Published with Science in Society
Climate change and poverty offers a timely new perspective on the 'ecosocial' understanding of the causes, symptoms and solutions to poverty and applies this to recent developments across a number of ...areas, including fuel poverty, food poverty, housing, transport and air pollution.
This book explores how climate institutions in industrialized countries work to further the recognition of social differences and integrate this understanding in climate policy making. With ...contributions from a range of expert scholars in the field, this volume investigates policy-making in climate institutions from the perspective of power as it relates to gender. It also considers other intersecting social factors at different levels of governance, from the global to the local level and extending into climate-relevant sectors. The authors argue that a focus on climate institutions is important since they not only develop strategies and policies, they also (re)produce power relations, promote specific norms and values, and distribute resources. The chapters throughout draw on examples from various institutions including national ministries, transport and waste management authorities, and local authorities, as well as the European Union and the UNFCCC regime. Overall, this book demonstrates how feminist institutionalist theory and intersectionality approaches can contribute to an increased understanding of power relations and social differences in climate policy-making and in climate-relevant sectors in industrialized states. In doing so, it highlights the challenges of path dependencies, but also reveals opportunities for advancing gender equality, equity, and social justice.Gender, Intersectionality and Climate Institutions in Industrialized States will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate politics, international relations, gender studies and policy studies.
This book challenges the widely accepted notion that globalization encourages economic convergence--and, by extension, cultural homogenization--across national borders. A systematic comparison of ...organizational change in Argentina, South Korea, and Spain since 1950 finds that global competition forces countries to exploit their distinctive strengths, resulting in unique development trajectories.
The West without water Ingram, B. Lynn; Malamud-Roam, Frances
2013., 20130702, 2013, 2013-08-01
eBook
The West without Water documents the tumultuous climate of the American West over twenty millennia, with tales of past droughts and deluges and predictions about the impacts of future climate change ...on water resources. Looking at the region’s current water crisis from the perspective of its climate history, the authors ask the central question of what is “normal” climate for the West, and whether the relatively benign climate of the past century will continue into the future. The West without Water merges climate and paleoclimate research from a wide variety of sources as it introduces readers to key discoveries in cracking the secrets of the region’s climatic past. It demonstrates that extended droughts and catastrophic floods have plagued the West with regularity over the past two millennia and recounts the most disastrous flood in the history of California and the West, which occurred in 1861–62. The authors show that, while the West may have temporarily buffered itself from such harsh climatic swings by creating artificial environments and human landscapes, our modern civilization may be ill-prepared for the future climate changes that are predicted to beset the region. They warn that it is time to face the realities of the past and prepare for a future in which fresh water may be less reliable.
As the effects of climate change continue to be felt, appreciation of its future transformational impact on numerous areas of public law and policy is set to grow. Among these, human rights concerns ...are particularly acute. They include forced mass migration, increased disease incidence and strain on healthcare systems, threatened food and water security, the disappearance and degradation of shelter, land, livelihoods and cultures, and the threat of conflict. This inquiry into the human rights dimensions of climate change looks beyond potential impacts to examine the questions raised by climate change policies: accountability for extraterritorial harms; constructing reliable enforcement mechanisms; assessing redistributional outcomes; and allocating burdens, benefits, rights and duties among perpetrators and victims, both public and private. The book examines a range of so-far unexplored theoretical and practical concerns that international law and other scholars and policy-framers will find increasingly difficult to ignore.
This open access book on straw management aims to provide a wide array of options for rice straw management that are potentially more sustainable, environmental, and profitable compared to current ...practice. The book is authored by expert researchers, engineers and innovators working on a range of straw management options with case studies from Vietnam, the Philippines and Cambodia. The book is written for engineers and researchers in order to provide them information on current good practice and the gaps and constraints that require further research and innovation. The book is also aimed at extension workers and farmers to help them decide on the best alternative straw management options in their area by presenting both the technological options as well as the value chains and business models required to make them work. The book will also be useful for policy makers, required by public opinion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, looking for research-based evidence to guide the policies they develop and implement.
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From Nobel Prize winner Syukuro Manabe and Anthony Broccoli, a definitive account of how we have come to understand the fundamental processes behind global warming Syukuro Manabe is perhaps the ...leading pioneer of modern climate modeling. Beyond Global Warming is his compelling firsthand account of how the scientific community came to understand the human causes of climate change, and how numerical models using the world's most powerful computers have been instrumental to these vital discoveries.Joined by atmospheric scientist Anthony Broccoli, Manabe shows how climate models have been used as virtual laboratories for examining the complex planetary interactions of atmosphere, ocean, and land. Manabe and Broccoli use these studies as the basis for a broader discussion of human-induced global warming—and what the future may hold for a warming planet. They tell the stories of early trailblazers such as Svante Arrhenius, the legendary Swedish scientist who created the first climate model of Earth more than a century ago, and they provide rare insights into Manabe's own groundbreaking work over the past five decades. Expertly walking readers through key breakthroughs, they explain why increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has caused temperatures to rise in the troposphere yet fall in the stratosphere, why the warming of the planet's surface differs by hemisphere, why drought is becoming more frequent in arid regions despite the global increase in precipitation, and much more.Authoritative and illuminating, Beyond Global Warming is an invaluable insider's look at some of today's most cutting-edge Earth science, and a rare window into a brilliant scientific mind.